


And in the hours before

by FelixCulpa19



Category: Christian Bible (New Testament), Christian Lore
Genre: Gen, God bless those still tortured in prisons, Man of Sorrows, Torture, Unfettered abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-05
Updated: 2015-10-05
Packaged: 2018-04-25 00:34:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4939882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FelixCulpa19/pseuds/FelixCulpa19
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The dawn of Good Friday. Soldiers prepare their king for his death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And in the hours before

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/148696) by 21softballstar. 



He heard the footsteps echoing down the hallway and felt his heart begin to sink. So soon, he thought. Too exhausted to feel fear, yet knowing too much of the future to hope, the man could only muster what strength he had left and try to even his breathing, all the while his mind pounding a mallet’s time. So much sooner to the afternoon, when he would be hoisted up to the sky; so much closer to dying. The long night of abuse was over, and now, the dawn of a day of death.

He had never expected it to be like this.

“…if he wasn’t so stubbornly silent...” a voice trailed some twenty feet away.

“I don’t know what they were all so scared of, he couldn’t scare a child. Stupid prophet.”

“We’ve got time on our hands, boys. Let’s use it well.”

Keys rattled against metal. Hulking figures were silhouetted against the torchlight, all of them leering hatefully towards the man they had strung up to the ceiling but a few hours before. He looked pitiful; his head hung downwards, chin almost touching his chest that blood from his mouth had dripped onto, arms wrenched above his head in an ironic pose of prayer, feet trembling with strain as bruised toes touched their tips to a filthy stone floor.

“Had enough sleep, Son of God?” one of the soldiers asked mockingly as they entered the small cell and surrounded their prisoner.

Remembering their sport from earlier, one soldier pressed a palm forcefully on his bruised ribcage. Jesus’ face twisted in pain.

“Awake at last! Have you said your morning prayers yet? No?”

They untied the knot hoisting him to the ceiling bars and he dropped heavily to the ground. After the torturous hours of suspension, hanging like a lamb at the slaughterhouse, Jesus hoped to stay on the floor longer but the soldiers planned otherwise. He fought back a moan as someone grabbed fistfuls of his hair and forced him to his knees.

“Where is your strength now, Messiah? Or have you finally come to senses?”

“You’re not going to be here much longer, why don’t you play with us a while, huh?”

Laughter filled Jesus ears as he was kicked to the ground, lips scraping painfully as the force rocked him. He was dirt under their feet, a troublemaker getting his just desserts in their eyes. He was a rag in the midst of puppies, a punching bag to soldiers who wanted nothing more than to use their strength on someone else. As he heard them step closer to continue their savagery, Jesus prayed a silent thanks to His Father for what he had suffered already and what was to come. His tortures would be great, but if he just kept His mind on the reward…

“Why aren’t you talking? You cured the dumb but can’t cure yourself?”

“Think you’re so strong aren’t you, Jesus?” another adjoined. The chain around his neck was pulled tighter and his breath caught in his throat, strangled, “haven’t you gotten off your high horse already?”

“Pull it tighter,” one said to the man holding the chain. The man did, and Jesus’ strangled gasps reverberated across the walls. Garnering a sadistic satisfaction at their prisoner’s agony, his choked breaths as he tried unsuccessfully to gulp oxygen into his lungs, they prolonged the torture, loosening their hold just long enough to allow half a breath before pulling the chin taut against his neck again. He was back on his knees, pulled there by the chain at his neck, and in the half light of the cell; the bruises formed by the tightening throughout the night formed an ever-darkening circle around his throat.

They stopped at last - halted by their guardian angels who couldn’t stand to see their Creator so mistreated ay longer - and Jesus fell onto the floor again. He trembled like a leaf there, his arms were dead after losing so much blood hanging upright, his legs numb with the cold brought in by stray drafts of wind. He closed his eyes, and prayed that he would eventually make it out of the prison because he could not imagine getting up after everything.

“Abba, forgive them,” He muttered as he was prodded by the soldiers as he lay, “forgive Man’s sins, bring them home to us again-“

“What’s that?” one of them asked mockingly. “Save your breath son of God, we’re not done yet.”

“That’s right, we have to prepare you for your death sentence this morning!”

A bucket of dirty water was brought closer and, hauling him by the arms while his legs dragged behind, they thrust his head into the water and held it there, bidding him to wash his face. Spit, dirt and thinly crusted blood joined the brown liquid. Again and again, they submerged Jesus, scornfully ordering to him to get rid of the dank odour that pervaded him and laughing as he tried to get the water out of his face yet couldn’t, his hands still being held behind his back. Someone pounded on the nape of his neck and he nearly vomited, coughing so much his eyes swam.

After that, the soldiers hauled the prisoner to his feet and began to roughly strip away his clothes. The chains were unloosed, as were the ropes that had bound him throughout the night. There was a red bracelet of skin rubbed raw around his wrists. Then, holding him firmly by the hair, first the robe - muddied and wrinkled - and then the mantle and his girdle were taken from him and cast carelessly on the ground. The clothes, woven by his mother, were trampled on before his eyes while the soldiers continued to taunt his pain.

“Where are you from, the streets? What a poor master you must be!”

“Guess we needn’t bother about breakfast then - you couldn’t possibly afford it.”

“We’ve been so nice giving a beggar like you shelter then! Pay up, Jesus!”

A slap landed on an already throbbing cheek. Tears welled in his eyes, held back only by the knowledge that his misery was only fuel to a sadistic fire.

Clad in just his undergarments, a long shirt of sorts with his loincloth underneath, Jesus shivered, humiliated beyond speech by his derisive captors. They waved his clothes before him, mocking his poverty, his silence, his pain. Hurting from the blows from the night before - horrible kicks and punches that had echoed as they hit and left purple bruises on his torso - Jesus was hunched over, unable to stand straight. Noticing this, the soldiers laughed.

“Stand straight, Jesus! What terrible posture, king of kings!”

“Yes, like this!”

Without warning, one soldier stepped like a vice on his feet, rooting him there while another pulled his hair back, straightening his back but pulling cruelly on his injured abdomen. He cried out in pain, his stomach protesting at the sudden torture.

“There it is! Again, Jesus! Yell for us once more!”

Someone kicked viciously at his shins, the pain of the force connecting to the bones too great to endure in silence. His agonized wails filled the cell and the corridors, and Jesus wondered just how anyone could have pleasure at this, at the sufferings of another fellow human. From the corner of his eye, he saw Satan watching, and once again the choice of abandoning his divine quest flitted temptingly across his mind.

“It sounds so much better than those parables you wouldn’t stop spouting!”

“Louder! Again!” the cries continued.

A soldier’s heel kicked at his groin and Jesus dropped to his knees, gasping. Breathing hoarsely, tears streaming down his face, his vision clashed in colours of red and grey. Red, red, red dribbled onto the floor. His hands clawed at the ground as he tried to stand but, wanting to prolong his misery, two soldiers grabbed his wrists forced him on his back, his shoulder blades pressed against the stone.

“Abba. Abba…” He gave a rasped cry as someone stood on his hand, particularly on the wrist bone. Stretched out in a crude crucifix form on the floor, he could see only angry faces against a dark ceiling, so far from a compassionate face. “Thy will be done. Thy will be done. Thy will be done.”

“Yes, that’s right,” the soldier holding the torches aloft mocked. “Pray that God will forgive you for your sins, you filthy impersonator!

A guttural moan he couldn’t recognise as his own followed as his right leg was dealt a heavy kick. They allowed their prisoner no rest. The fact that this brutality was at the hands of his own people, people he had come to welcome but only incited to hate him, was the salt to his wounds. This was devilry under human masks, defiling him. 

Another kick to the cheek, nearly dislodging a tooth. He thought of all his followers who would experience the same humiliation in their own martrydoms, for His sake; vowed that He would not let them suffer alone, not like this. He mewled pitifully, pain numbing his consciousness. The Earth held it’s breath and looked away, lest it tear itself in two.

Perhaps moved to something like pity at the sight of the man on the ground, chest rising and falling rapidly characteristic of someone in shock, the soldiers grabbed Jesus by the hair again and pulled him to his feet. His legs, exhausted, promptly gave out and he sank to his knees with a groan.

“What time is it now?” the first soldier asked gruffly. “Caiaphas wants him out by sunrise.”

“Then let’s get him out then. He’s just about had all the breakfast he needs.”

The chains and ropes were lifted from the corner of the cell. Out of the cell, they would hand his weakened body to pagan Romans who would finish what they had already begun to break.

“Let’s dress you now, Messiah.”

“You’re so much better like this - silent!”

Still on his knees, head downcast - to the annoyance of the soldiers, who wanted to see him look up to them, completely inferior to them - Jesus moaned softly as the ropes once were once again tied around his wrists, his arms behind his back. The chains were roped around his neck, once, twice, tightened again. But despite the mild strangulation, the prisoner said nothing. His silence unnerved his torturers, whose mockery subsided.

The powers of heaven and hell watching the exchange were silent in awe and dismay. It was divinely ironic; Creator at the hands of creation, true supreme Power made low by his own accord.

God gave justice to those who were denied it in life. The compensation for his undeserved sufferings was the salvation of His church; a protection won by the blood He had shed. It was this that filled Jesus’ mind as the chain about his neck was tugged and he was led - like an animal - out of the cell.

“It’s going to be a long day,” one soldier said.

Jesus’ posture was bent, and he ached everywhere, his injuries compelling to hobble like a sick man.  Step by step, they led the Nazorean prisoner past scornful looks and mildly satisfied faces, and he, God incarnate, whispered a silent prayer for them all. He was closer to the end, now.

“Take him to Pilate,” he heard Caiaphas say.

The walls of the temple compound gave way to a watery dawn.

**Author's Note:**

> What happened in the time when Jesus was imprisoned by his own people remains strictly unmentioned in the Gospels. An author's take on what the Man of Sorrows would have experienced then.


End file.
